For a striking illustration of the diffusion and persistence of human sacrifice we may refer to Carthage where the distress caused by Agathocles in 310 B.C. was attributed to the wrath of the god to whom the rich had been offering purchased children instead of their own. But there is a general tendency in religion to soften crude rites, save when a particularly efficacious offering is felt necessary in the midst of some grave crisis, and of the changes in that background of cult which has survived throughout the history of Palestine, the substitution of the animal for the human victim is the most significant. Yet, as we have seen, the idea of human sacrifice has not entirely disappeared (p. 40). The animal is still recognised as a 'ransom,' and in the present rite of that name loss of human life is averted by the sacrifice of some animal, and it is explained that the sacrifice will combat and overcome the cause of the impending danger. It would be only logical, therefore, to proceed on the assumption that the greater the danger the more powerful and efficacious must be the sacrifice. Current beliefs thus {44} afford suggestive hints for earlier usage, and when we learn that to-day a natural death finds consolation in the thought that it may have been the ransom for another, we meet with an idea that could be put into practice: it is no great step to the ceremonies (observed in Africa) which give effect to the conviction that a man's life may be prolonged or his old age recuperated by the actual sacrifice of another human being. It is essentially the same idea when Egyptian kings, like Amenhotep II. and Ramses II. slew the prisoners of war that they themselves or their name 'might live for ever.' (On the _name_, see below, p. 60.) Sacrificial rites were never irrational, however difficult it may be to perceive their object, and from a survey of comparative custom one can sometimes picture the scenes by which they were accompanied. It is only by such means that one can conjecturally explain the discovery near the temple-area at Gezer of animal bones, sliced, hacked, and broken into fragments, with no signs of having been cooked. One is tempted to refer to a rite practised by the Arabs of the Sinaitic desert towards the close of the fourth century A.D. The old ascete, Nilus, describes a solemn procession of chanting worshippers {45} who move around an altar of rude stones upon which is bound a camel. The beast is stabbed, and the leader drinks of the gushing blood. At once the assembly hack the victim to pieces, devouring it raw until the whole is consumed--the entire ceremony begins with the rise of the morning star (in whose honour it was performed) and ends with the rising sun. Was some rite of this kind practised in Palestine? It must be a matter for conjecture; the least that can be said is that the scene is not too barbaric for our land and period.